http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2011/jan/02/to-guard-americas-wilderness/?opiniontimes
America's population is expected to grow by another 82 million people by mid-century, spurring increased pressure on the nation's natural resources, especially fresh water, forests and open lands. Balancing the demands of growth and the competing need to preserve places for future generations of Americans to recreate or find solitude in natural places is thus destined to become increasingly difficult.
Among the best ways to preserve our nation's vanishing backcountry and wilderness areas is to restore authority to the federal Bureau of Land Management to keep an updated inventory of the government's land holdings, which are mostly in the inter-mountain West, and to recommend to Congress especially significant and vulnerable areas for designation as permanent national wilderness areas.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar took a welcome step in the direction last week when he reversed the grossly irresponsible decision of his predecessor, Gale Norton, seven years ago renouncing the department's and the nation's vital interest in assessing and recommending BLM-administered lands for such protection. Salazar's duty now, and that of the Obama administration, is to see that the BLM resumes the diligent execution of that mission.
On its history, it's hard to trust the BLM to do the right thing. The agency has for decades tended to function as the crony servant of the oil, gas, forest and cattle industries, a habit imposed and ingrained under the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations.
Under the latter, especially under Dick Cheney's and George W. Bush's oil and gas industry cronies, the Department of the Interior, which oversees the BLM, conceded to a demand by the state of Utah to open 2.6 million acres of vulnerable but undeclared wilderness areas to oil and natural gas exploration and motorized-vehicle use.
Norton wrongly took the further step of essentially rescinding the BLM's regulatory authority for protecting, assessing and recommending wilderness areas throughout the BLM's entire 250 million acres of public land holdings.
Salazar's reversal of that egregious decision is welcome. But if affirmation of the BLM's duty to protect such lands is not explicitly emphasized down the BLM's ranks, it likely will go disrespected and unheeded.
States with BLM lands within their borders are particularly anxious for the agency to end its "no more wilderness" policy and assert protective oversight. Indeed, 89 members of Congress from such states have signed a letter to the BLM seeking its cooperation in wilderness protection.
Only Congress can actually declare wilderness areas, but by making "study areas" of potential wilderness, the BLM can assert a layer of protection pending congressional action. Salazar should respond promptly by ordering the BLM to renew assessments and first-level protection for potential wilderness areas. All Americans ultimately will benefit.
